Takes place before the Saiyans landed on Earth. Kami's nemesis's son: Garlic Jr. has made his first move in seeking revenge. Due to his father loosing the title of Earth's Guardian to Kami. Junior sends out his minions to collect the Dragon Balls so that way he can wish to be immortal. Gohan was kidnapped during the Dragon Ball hunt, because he was wearing one on his head. Gohan's dad, Goku must rescue his son as well as defeat the "Immortal hungry" Junior.

For only being the first Dragon Ball Z movie. It lives up to being an enjoyable flick. Contains the same opening as the long running TV series. While the the whole thing felt like a two parter episode than a movie. Of course anything shorter than an hour always seems that way. It was the same with the first 3 Dragon Ball Movies. Ignoring that, this feature film is worth watching. I imagine the Kami/Piccolo fans to enjoy this because the play a part in it.

Available to own on DVD as well as the other 12 full length features.

This is the first movie with the "Dragonball Z" title on it. There were in fact some before this, but they had the original "Dragonball" series names on it. It's weird how this is actually shorter than some of the specials! I still consider it a feature length movie. If so, it might be the shortest one I've ever seen. It makes no sense with the show, even though it should with the filler of the Garlic Jr. saga. There's no reason why Krillin would be surprised Goku has a son in the first episode or why everyone is surprised when Gohan unleashes his power on Radditz as those things happened here.

With all that being said, I still enjoyed it, but wouldn't quite recommend it. The scenes where Gohan gets drunk is some of the funniest stuff the series has ever done! I love the idea of taking Emperor Pilaf's voice and giving it to a serious villain. I don't know if I ever realized that Ox King is Gohan's grandfather before. There's so many characters it's hard to keep up with how they're related! The animation is good too. ***

A pretty good prequel to the Dragon Ball Z Series overall.

The major downfall of this film is the scripts for the voice actors. Everything they say seems rushed to make sure it fills in with the mouth movements of the characters. The voices are also fairly emotionless, "Just another day on the job" kinda deal.

The fighting sequences are what you can expect from Dragon Ball, fast paced and entertaining, but ultimately end anti-climactic and rather quickly. The ending of this fight also doesn't fit very well with the show's timline, the example I can think of off the top of my head being the fact that Gohan's burst of power that pushes Garlic Jr. into the Dead Zone is never mentioned during the Vegeta Saga of the show where none of the shows characters appear to know how strong Gohan really is.

The film does have some good points though, the main one being that it is entertaining enough to watch for 40 minutes or so without getting bored.